The younger daughter of the Vestrit family whose passionate connection to the liveship Vivacia and refusal to accept her exclusion from seafaring drives much of the Liveship Traders Trilogy. Althea's arc is one of the sequence's most satisfying - a woman who earns her place through genuine competence in a world that would prefer she stay ashore - and her relationship with Vivacia is one of the trilogy's emotional anchors. Her path crosses with the wider Elderlings sequence in ways that reward the full reading of the universe.

FitzChivalry Farseer's unexpected daughter, born small and strange in ways that mark her as different from her earliest days. Bee's perspective on the world is among the most distinctive in the Elderlings sequence - her perception operates differently from other characters, her understanding of events around her is simultaneously more limited and more profound than those events' participants realise, and her voice gives the Fitz and the Fool trilogy a second centre of gravity that gradually becomes as important as Fitz's own. Her arc across the trilogy is one of Hobb's most sustained examinations of what it means to survive.

The illegitimate son of Prince Chivalry Farseer, brought to Buckkeep Castle as a child and raised in the stables before being taken into the service of the crown as a royal assassin. Fitz carries both the Skill and the Wit - the former the prised magic of the Farseer line, the latter a stigmatised ability to bond with animals that he must conceal throughout his life. Hobb's most sustained creation, followed across six novels and decades of in-world time, he is one of contemporary fantasy's most fully realised protagonists - a man defined by his service to others and his difficulty in serving himself.

A Rain Wild girl born with more of the river's physical changes than society considers acceptable, whose selection as a dragon keeper offers escape from a life of careful invisibility. Thymara's arc across the Rain Wild Chronicles is about the gradual discovery of what she is capable of when circumstances stop requiring her to minimise herself, and her relationship with her dragon Sintara - difficult, demanding, and ultimately transformative - is the emotional centre of the quartet. Her navigation of the keeper community's social dynamics and her own changing body give the Chronicles their most grounded human perspective.

The most senior of the Servants at Clerres, whose longevity and accumulated prophetic knowledge have made her the organisation's dominant force. Capra represents the ultimate corruption of the Servants' original purpose - a woman who began as a genuine seeker of better futures and has become someone who uses foreknowledge purely to perpetuate her own power. Her treatment of those with prophetic gifts and her history with the Fool are among the most disturbing revelations of Assassin's Fate.

A mid-ranking Servant whose fanatical devotion to the organisation's mission and whose particular cruelty toward those she considers threats make her one of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy's most immediately threatening antagonists. Dwalia's pursuit of Bee is the driving engine of much of the trilogy's plot, and her absolute certainty in her own righteousness gives her a particular quality of menace - she is dangerous precisely because she believes completely in what she is doing.

A Servant with an unusual ability to compel others' compliance, whose relationship with Dwalia is one of dependency and fear rather than genuine loyalty. Vindeliar's arc across the Fitz and the Fool trilogy is one of its more surprising - a character introduced as a straightforward threat who develops unexpected complexity as his circumstances change. His interactions with Bee are among the trilogy's most carefully observed examinations of power and vulnerability.

A Bingtown Trader's daughter, plain and freckled with red hair and grey eyes. A self-taught scholar of dragons and Elderlings with an extensive private library. She enters a loveless marriage of convenience with Hest Finbok, who offers her financial security and a promise to visit the Rain Wilds. Five years into the marriage she finally forces Hest to honour that promise and travels upriver on the liveship Paragon.

A mysterious bead-maker with a shop in Bingtown, of indeterminate origin and unsettling perceptiveness. She seems to know far more than she should about Althea and the liveships, and her interest in Paragon is deeply personal.

The grown son of Paragon's captain and mate, raised aboard the liveship. He is graceful and easy-mannered, with his father's height and his mother's Vestrit eyes.

A disgraced Bingtown Trader's son who serves as first mate on Vivacia before his dismissal, and whose subsequent history with cindin and the docks of Bingtown forms the backdrop to his eventual role in the rescue mission. Brashen's relationship with Althea is one of the trilogy's most carefully developed romances - complicated by circumstance, pride, and the genuine equality of their regard for each other. His captaincy of the Paragon is one of the trilogy's central plot threads.

The stablemaster of Buckkeep who raises Fitz after Prince Chivalry's abdication, providing the closest thing to a father the boy has. Burrich is a man of fierce principles and genuine tenderness beneath a forbidding exterior, whose complicated feelings about the Wit - which he suppresses in himself with considerable cost - shape his relationship with Fitz in ways neither fully understands for much of the sequence. One of the most beloved supporting characters in the Elderlings universe.

The illegitimate half-brother of King Shrewd who has served the Farseer crown as its secret assassin for decades, living hidden in the walls of Buckkeep Castle. Chade takes Fitz as his apprentice and shapes his training as an assassin with a complex mixture of genuine care and ruthless pragmatism. One of the longest-serving characters in the sequence, appearing across all three Fitz trilogies, his relationship with Fitz evolves from mentor to colleague to something more complicated as both age and the costs of their service become clearer.

One of the Four who rule Clerres, a man who wears heavy white cosmetics over his face and dresses in green. He is the creator of poisoned weapons and cruel devices.

The son of Verity Farseer and Kettricken, introduced as a young prince in the Tawny Man Trilogy and present as the reigning king in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Dutiful's relationship with Fitz spans two trilogies and considerable in-world time, evolving from the rescued prince and his rescuer to something more complex as both age into their respective roles. His handling of the political dimensions of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy's crisis reflects the king his parents shaped him to become.

A former slave woman who becomes Kennit's companion - one of the trilogy's more complex secondary figures, whose fierce intelligence and genuine love for a man who is incapable of reciprocating it in kind make her arc one of its quietest and most affecting. Etta's perspective on the pirate at the centre of the trilogy is one of clear, unsentimental sight - seeing him as he is rather than as one wishes him to be.

One of the Four who rule Clerres, wearing yellow attire. He is known for his inappropriate interest in young Whites and his ability to perceive futures.

Chade's son, assigned to Fitz's household as a scribe and reluctant participant in the events of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Lant's arc is about the discovery of competence and courage under circumstances that could not have been anticipated, and his gradual development from an unprepared young man into someone capable of being relied upon gives him a quiet but satisfying trajectory across the trilogy.

An ancient male dragon entombed in glacial ice on the island of Aslevjal - the last surviving male dragon from the era before the cataclysm, and the figure whose rescue becomes the central quest of Fool's Fate. The longer consequences of that quest for the dragon population of the world are among the things the Tawny Man trilogy lets its closing chapters carefully unfold.

One of King Dutiful's sons, a young Farseer prince who joins Kettricken's party escorting Bee through the Mountains.